


tear it down to build it higher

by GyrFalcon



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: F/F, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rape Aftermath, Rape Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 03:22:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5274650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GyrFalcon/pseuds/GyrFalcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessica and Trish over the years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tear it down to build it higher

Trish had kissed her, tasting of root beer, steady hands grasping her waist, giggling against her lips. The kind of kiss girls got from boys in the movies, slow and warm and nice.

It was late o’clock, New York city lights painting the room multi-coloured, and Trish was going to be interning at some radio station. Jessica had suggested drinking to celebrate, pulled a six pack out from under the bed, pulled Trish onto the bed.

 _I love you._ Trish had whispered, kissing the corner of her mouth, leaning into her cheek.  And Jessica didn’t laugh, but she didn’t say it back either, letting the haze of the alcohol wash over her.

Pulling back, Trish stared at her with New York city reflected in her eyes, serious and sad. _I love you._

 _I know._ Her shirt still smelled of Trish and spilt beer three weeks later.

.

 _Remember when,_ Trish starts. And Jessica’s mind fills the pause with a hundred different memories. Trish’s mother shouting, throwing ornaments from the table at Trish. That summer Trish taught her to skateboard because she’d gone through a phase. When they would kiss boys in dark doorways but never bring them home. When they tried to dye her hair and it went green and she cut it short and wore it like a warning.

 _Remember when we would talk about the future._ Trish says. Like it happened often, and wasn’t a collection of half conversations and unfinished sentences in the middle of arguments.

( _I hate you!_ Jessica had screamed. She can’t remember why. It was one of the times Trish had talked about leaving, out of the state or the country she had never been sure. She had wanted to move. To do things. All Jessica could think of was unanswered calls, empty beds, being alone. She had already moved. And moved. And moved.

It’s not that she can’t remember her life before Trish, it’s that she doesn’t want to.)

_Yeah, for some reason we never mentioned the superheroes or the mind controlling rapists, though._

.

 _Why do people do it?_ Jessica had asked Trish once, over half a bologna sandwich and several job applications to employers more desperate than she was. _You hear about these idiots running around in costumes getting their asses kicked every weekend like they couldn’t do that anyway if they went to a bar on a Saturday night like a normal person._

Trish, who had already finished some kind of salad-soup thing that Jessica hadn’t been sure was actually food, looked at her with an expression she imagined she also wore when she drunk called her at 2am. Overly kind.

_I think they do it for the same reason you put the fear of Jessica Jones in my mother._

_Wow, they’re doing it all for you?_

_Jessica- yes. For me. And for everyone else. Because they care. Or maybe they need to._

_I would do it for you._ Jessica hadn’t said.

The next week Trish had written up a list of potential superhero names for her. And made a costume. Jessica hid her smile behind a bottle of beer.

.

They’re sleeping in Trish’s bed because Jessica’s apartment needs…. Well, it needs to be rebuilt. It totally wasn’t her fault this time, so she doesn’t feel guilty about eating all of the good stuff from Trish’s cupboards and stealing the covers.

Trish is curled up, asleep but not deeply. She never really sleeps when Jessica is around, too used to waking up to screaming and crying and a hand grabbing her throat. Jessica had slept on the couch a few times, woken up to Trish curled around her like she was trying to hold her together, keep her there. She wonders if, so deep down she can’t even admit to herself, Trish expects her to run. To run again. She wonders if Trish would follow her. Or stay here, her radio show like a beacon, calling Jessica’s name over and over.

The world goes purple, and she grits her teeth and shoves herself over to hide her face in Trish’s hair. A hand reaches back, clasps her wrist, thumb stroking her arm.

_Main Street. Birch Street. Higgins Drive. Cobalt Lane._

They say it together into the pillows, sloppy with sleep. 

Jessica doesn’t fall asleep again, but she feels safe. 

. 

Sometime after the Sandwich Incident but before Kilgrave, Jessica had felt lost in the city she’d always known. Like someone had scooped out her insides and forgotten to replace them, and alcohol wasn’t filling the hole. 

She’d phone Trish, or Trish’s show, criticise her assistants or other asshole callers or pigeons, arrange lunches she wouldn’t turn up for. 

Trish would always take her calls. 

. 

There were guys. In bathroom stalls, behind a 7-Eleven, in clubs. There were even boyfriends who came to dinner, or walked out of the bedroom in the morning. But at some point, they stopped mattering. Trish stopped texting her about dates, Jessica stopped complaining all the dudes who only wanted theirs and forgot about her. The boyfriends at meals or in the bathroom at 11am became less frequent until they could almost forget they had ever been. 

_Maybe you just need a girlfriend._ Jessica had said, half drunk off of some fancy wine Trish had bottles of and laughing through the aftertaste.

Trish had drained her glass and gone to get another bottle, changing the conversation topic to some new health craze when she came back and pushing a glass of water at Jessica.

.

When Kilgrave died – ‘died’ - he took Jessica’s ability to trust and feel safe with him. He almost took Jessica, drowning at the bottom of yet another cheap bottle of piss. Breaking windows because he was there, she swore, he was there. Foregoing sleep because how she could protect herself if she wasn’t awake? And because of the nightmares, which were memories and all too real. Cuts and bruises stinging still, skin painted as purple as the fog she navigated her days through.

Trish paid for every window to get repaired, every wall, the door, the therapist, the other therapist. And she never left. There was a two week period where Trish Talks was cancelled and Jessica would lay awake to the sound of Trish telling down the phone that she would stick her foot so far up the ass of whichever rat bastard she was talking to that they’d be tasting Gucci for the rest of their life. And then she’d put her cell back in her pocket and came back with two glasses of water and a pizza, pulling a blanket over them both and saying how she’d forgotten how shit daytime TV was so maybe they should put on a movie. She’d leave pauses in the conversation, keep reminded Jessica she was there if she wanted to talk. Cleaned her entire apartment and restocked the fridge. Trish went with her to therapy appointments, made the therapy appointments, and took her to the kind of rundown haunts where Kilgrave would never go and Jessica was pretty sure Trish herself wouldn’t usually set foot in.

Delirious with exhaustion and PTSD, she thought of superheroes with long blonde hair and dazzling smiles.

.

After Kilgrave; after-after Kilgrave and more ruined lives and gun shots and 'I love you’ and days where she couldn’t leave the house. When she had a new glass pane in her door and it still wasn’t the same font but it was right, and when Luke was speaking to her again and Trish was five sessions in with her hand-picked therapist, shit was still fucked and always going to be but they were alive and after several more near death encounters than Jessica really cared for she’d take it.

The photograph came out of her dresser and sat on her desk.

She kisses Trish like a woman kisses the love of her life.


End file.
